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Model Lighting & Railroad Signalling Controller

Purpose & Description

This product is a powerful and low-cost solution for model railroad lighting and signaling control. It uses a microcontroller that is user configured via the desktop application that then drives a "bus" of addressable RGB pixels or LEDs. The RGB pixels can each be individually configured for behavior & effects. The product supports a number of predefined lighting templates - beacons, crossing signals, traffic signals, floods, emergency services flashers, railroad 2 aspect dwarf signals etc.

Railroad lighting controllers are traditionally expensive and complex. Railroad signaling, traffic and diorama lighting require dedicated circuit boards and drivers for each light as well as complex wiring in the layout. This is cumbersome and expensive when used within large layouts, the costs running into the thousands of dollars.

Features

• The controller is a fully functional railroad signaling controller/lighting effects controller. It supports sensor inputs (typically, block detection) as well as digital outputs (typically used to trigger switches/turnouts). The controller is fully autonomous i.e. the PC software is only required to make configuration changes to the layout.

• For lights/lighting, this solution simplifies the layout wiring to a sequential "bus" style 3-wire interface (+5V, GND, Data) and each signal/light wired in series to the bus (4 wires - +5V, GND, DataIn, DataOut). So, if there are even 12 individual lamps on a signal mast, there are only 4 wires to connect ! Each light is individually controllable with ability to configure color and brightness where relevant/applicable.

• The controller has a DCC interface (read-only) and can react to configured DCC commands. This allows integration with popular Train control software such as Friewald software - Train Controller. The controller has 32 i/o pins that can be used to drive block detectors and/or turnout/switches.

• The controller has a full-featured aspect-signaling engine that autonomously/automatically controls the signal states based on occupancy detectors and/or turnout states.

• The controller supports a configurable "rules" engine that allows you to set-up rules to suit your scenes. Eg. rules can link signals (state of one signal triggers a state change of another signal). DCC events can also trigger state-changes in any signal.

• The controller has built-in support for a number of lighting elements and special effects (eg. railroad aspect signals, traffic signals, police lights etc.). The controller contains pre-defined "state" models that define each signal's behavior. For eg. a traffic signal in normal mode, goes from red=>green=>amber=>red in a timed sequence. It also can have flashing amber or flashing red as stable states. A flood light has only an on or off state etc. etc.

• The controller has a built in clock and can be configured for time based events.

• The controller supports up to 255 LEDs which is typically enough for configuring 150 aspect signals. This can be extended by configuring multiple "signal legs" each with up to 255 serially addressable LEDs.

Power

• 5V 5Amp to drive up to 100 LEDs + accessories (20 mA/LED)
• USB-C interface / PowerDelivery

Interfaces

• DCC (2 pin)
• LED Bus (3 pin)
• 16 sensor pins (block detectors or accessories)
• 16 output pins (switches/turnouts or accessories)

Signal Types / Animations

• Road Traffic (1, 2 & 3 aspect)
• Floods & Lamps
• Tower Lights & Beacons
• Railroad Signals ** Railroad Crossing ** 1, 2 & 3 Aspects ** Mars Lights
• Safety -- Police -- Ambulance & Fire
• Special Effects -- Fire -- Welding

Rule Types

• Triggers - IF this THEN that
• Mirror - state of A is copied to B
• Link - behavior is dependent on signal type.
• Trigger - state of A triggers state of B
• Time - @time, trigger state A, every XX trigger state A
• DCC Trigger - DCC (addr, state) triggers state
• Sensor Trigger - inputs (i/o sensors) triggers state

• For Traffic, this creates the complementary state (useful for signals at crossroads or sequencing signals)
• For Railroad Aspect Signalling, this allows for setting the state of the subsequent block automatically
• Outputs (i/o outputs) can also be triggered (instead of signals)

Limits

• maxPixels = 255 (WS2812B)
• maxSignals = 128
• maxRules = 255
• maxBlocks = 128
• maxTurnouts = 128
• Power = 5v @ 5A max (should be plenty for 255 pixels)

Layout

Features in development

• Touchscreen Interface for manual layout control of routes, switches etc.
• Testing of integration with 3rd party block detection and turnout control boards eg. NCE, Digitrax kit
• Testing of integration with 3rd party software layout managers eg. Traincontroller

Screenshots